Not enough normal

Right now, I’m having a bunch of stand-offs with one of my teens that you can basically characterize like this: she wants me – us, the family – to be ‘normal’, and I can’t give that to her.

She wants me to be the ‘normal’ sort of mum that spends more time washing dishes than sharing my thoughts in my writing; she wants a ‘normal’ house that doesn’t have 50 year old mangy floor tiles, and black grouting around the kitchen sinks.

She wants to be able to treat her various ailments and issues the ‘normal’ way, i.e. like a zombie who just goes to a doctor, pops a bunch of pills, and then doesn’t have to grapple with any of the deeper reasons for why they aren’t feeling so hot.

She wants us to ‘fit’ with her group of ‘normal’ dati leumi-type friends, she hates my husband’s (small…) payot, she hates that I’m not working a full-time, soul-destroying job, like all the ‘normal’ parents of her friends.

In short, I seem to be one big, fat, huge disappointment to her.

And both of us are struggling to find the way forward here, because while I’ve done my darndest to try to give my kids what they want – if it’s possible, and good for them – I simply can’t give her ‘normal’.

And what is making this situation so much more upsetting than otherwise is that I recognize that in a lot of ways, she’s just mirroring my own inner yearning for ‘normal’.

I’ve wanted to be normal since I was the one Jewish kid in my class of xtian Baptists at school.

When I was younger, I also couldn’t understand why I had to belong to such a weird, and frankly embarrassing, gene pool, that ate bits of apple for New Year, had five (!) kids, and drove an old minibus around, as that was the only way we all fit in the car.

And there was other ‘abnormal’ stuff that grated on me too, like the fact that my dad (who is a Moroccan Israeli) used to go on…and on…and on… about ‘tiny Israel’, and all the countries that were trying to invade and destroy it.

None of the other families spoke about Israel, no-one else cared, why did I have to sit through all that all the time?

And then when my family starting moving around a lot, when I was 14, the level of abnormality rose up to the heavens. I abnormally missed a whole year of school, because my parents couldn’t decide where to live.

We abnormally pinged from Canada to the UK – and back again, repeatedly – for the next four years.

And then on top of that, my parents did something else ‘abnormal’, and started keeping the Torah.

No more going out on Friday nights, eating in McDonalds, or having xmas trees.

How abnormal it all was!

Of course now, I’m grateful for at least that last bit of weirdness, where my parents made teshuva. And I’m also grateful that I have 4 siblings. And I’m also grateful that we got the heck out of Barking, Essex, which has become the local HQ of ISIS in the Greater London area.

But still….part of me thinks sometimes that it would nice to be normal.

I also want to have a nicer house.

I also want to ‘fit’ a bit better, and to have a bit more to show for my efforts.

I also wish – a billion times over, already – that my daughter’s acne would start to fade already, because I know that the pull to Roaccutane is behind so much of her attacks on my ‘abnormal’ approach to life.

What do I do?

I don’t know.

Not for the first time, I feel like I can’t see any doors opening on to salvation, and I’m backed in a corner. I’m starting to get angry at the kid, which is never a good sign, because when anger starts to enter the equation, you can say and do a whole bunch of hurtful, stupid things that can have potentially disastrous consequences for the relationship.

But in the meantime, she wants something I really can’t give her, and both of us are getting increasingly frustrated about the situation.

God, come and rescue me! Come and rescue her!

Come and give this kid enough ‘normal’ to make her feel a bit happier, and a bit less disgruntled.

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My kids, too, would like “normal.” A mom who wears a normal sheitel instead of scarf wraps. A family with at least a few frum cousins, as all of theirs are secular. A home that is immaculate, or at least clean enough to prove to the world that we are “shidduch-ready” for the ones who are left in the house after the eldest 3 married a bit quirkier than would care about such things. How on earth will she find a yeshivish learning boy if we aren’t “normal?” Only Hashem knows, and I wish He would move things along a little. I for one, am ready for less normal, as in Moshiach spectacular!

Tea from this plant:
Its leaves or flowers…http://oretzchaim.blogspot.com/2018/11/niyog-niyogan-quisqualis-indica-chinese.html
Look around, it must be somewhere…
Beside that, i am super thankful that a not NORMAL dear friend of my exactly a yaer ago!!!! came, took and safe my daughter, and then together with her not so long pejos husband called Harav Berland in emergency to safe the saver!!!! Then this TZADIK changed the TEVA en the saver was freed to safe others…
How incredible, while no one else, not even blood family moved a finger. Now this young woman is having her Jewish BD this evening, it is again SHABBAT as the day she was born, in SNEW STORM in Europe on erev Shabbat. Her chiloni father never put hand on her head to bless her in the evening of Shabbat to be like SARAH, RIVKA LEAH EN RACHEL.
And that is what your daughter have, the blessing from her amazing parents while being in ERETZ ISRAEL. its a miracle!
Bless them with ful kavana in our/HIS HOLY LAND.

I am so thankful that these weird people, walking on this Earth that SERVE HASHEM ONLY, are around, otherwise i will have to become normal…in my case for being with health 3 times above nature, that means dead.
Baruh she lo asani goy!

May you have with all Klal Israel a beautiful preparations of Shabbat, may you have ONEG SHABBAT b ERETZ ISRAEL, with the KDUSHA in TAHARA, all of you, all of us.
Thank you!
Shabbat SHALOM UMEVORAH

As for this…
After the savoir action the savor asked a woman to be ‘again’ his wife.
The girl you saved with rabbi Berland and this person gave a testimony, that the person did a real TSHUVA and asked this woman to say yes.
3 days after the girls BD, on TET B SHEVAT, during the SHABBAT SHIRA week, the CHATUNA WAS held in the HOLY CITY of Tiverias, at the TZION of Rabbi Meir Baal Ha Ness.
‘Accidentaly’ also Rabbi Natan came and sing the most beautiful song for this NEW couple.
And i realized, that the domino effect of your crazy action….SAVED BET HA MIKDASH!!!!!
So may i say thank you to you and your husband and everyone involved (Esther Malka) THE TZADIK….for something amzing we do not see yet….but WILL.

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About Me

Rivka Levy is a Breslov writer who is trying not to go bonkers while she waits for Moshiach to show up. She's the author of The Secret Diary of a Jewish Housewife series, plus a bunch of other books like Talk To God and Fix Your Health, 49 Days, and Unlocking the Secret of the Erev Rav.